Friday, November 24, 2017

Poem - Pole Dance

Pole Dance
Chaplain O. Kris Widmer
Idea:   November 22, 2017                  First Distribution: November 23, 2017
For a couple, still loving each other, even after her stroke.


Not all exotic dancers
are found on mirrored stages,
clutching chrome poles
in dark clubs
with thumping music,
clad in fringes and tassels and G-strings.
where lust-filled males applaud,
their only touch of the smooth sweaty flesh
is when they tuck the current currency
that festoons their gyrating hips.

No they aren’t.
You see…

In a lived-in living room
with dark paneling
and furniture from the fifties,
Mabel (not her real name)
a woman in her late eighties
also grabs a pole,
(white with a black rubber grip
installed by her grandson)
with her still strong Right hand.
Her left hangs
limp and lovely, useless at her side.
She lifts her wasting frame
off the wheel chair,
transferring her to the loveseat
where her aged husband-lover,
Jim (not his real name)
awaits her womanly warmth
to rest once again beside him.

She settles down and in.
He reaches to hold her hand,
like he has so many times before.
He feels again the current current of her blood.
Then, his hand moves, to pat her upper thigh.
Besides their daily kisses with dry, pasty lips
This is the only action remaining for them
qualifies as sexual behavior.

Except for her doctors in the past
and her mortician in the future;
he is the only man
who will have ever touched her…there.

With motionless hands,
He applauds her for,
the private pole dance,
performed once again

just for him.

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